An unidentified blogger has claimed that his Internet-connected smart television has been transmitting detailed information including the times and channels his family members watch and even the names of all computer video files stored on connected USB drives over the internet.
The blogger going by the pseudonym ‘DoctorBeet’ describing himself as “developer, tweaker and Linux enthusiast” on his twitter profile, living in Yorkshire’s UK county, has said that the model number of his LG smart television is LG 42LN575V and was manufactured in May 2013.
He even has evidence supporting his claim which includes screenshots of data packets which he captured showing the information his TV sent unencrypted over the Internet. The data appeared to show a device ID unique of his set, along with the name of the channel the set was tuned to.
The blogger was surprised to find that every time the channel was changed information was sent over the internet. It was remarkable to note that even after he waded through the system preferences and set the “Collection of watching info” setting to “off” (it was on by default,) the smart TV continued sending the information.
To ensure, the blogger even created a mock video file called Midget_Porn_2013.avi and loaded it onto a USB drive and plugged it into his TV. It was found that the file name was transmitted unencrypted in HTTP traffic sent to the address GB.smartshare.lgtvsdp.com.
In the blog post on Monday DoctorBeet, wrote “Despite being missing at the moment, this collection URL could be implemented by LG on their server tomorrow, enabling them to start transparently collecting detailed information on what media files you have stored.”
“It would easily be possible to infer the presence of adult content or files that had been downloaded from file sharing sites. My wife was shocked to see our children’s names being transmitted in the name of a Christmas video file that we had watched from USB.”
When the blogger brought the monitoring behavior of the television set to LG representative’s attention, they made no apologies, rather they responded saying that “The advice we have been given is that unfortunately as you accepted the Terms and Conditions on your TV, your concerns would be best directed to the retailer”.
“We understand you feel you should have been made aware of these T’s and C’s at the point of sale, and for obvious reasons LG are unable to pass comment on their actions.”
